Bohdan Khomtchouk, Ph.D.
- Assistant Professor, Bioinformatics, Data Science
Contact
bokhomtiu [dot] edu
317-278-5203
IT 477
Related Links
Education
- Instructor of Medicine, University of Chicago, Department of Medicine, Section of Computational Biomedicine and Biomedical Data Science, Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology, Master of Science in Biomedical Informatics Program
- American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellow, Stanford University, Department of Biology, Division of Cardiovascular Medicine
- Ph.D. Human Genetics & Genomics, University of Miami (Miller School of Medicine), Center for Therapeutic Innovation
- B.S. (Triple Major summa cum laude in Molecular Biology & Biochemistry, Mathematics, and Physics), Benedictine University
Biography
Bohdan Khomtchouk is a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Bioinformatics and Data Science in the Department of BioHealth Informatics at our school, with faculty appointments in IU Cardiology at the Krannert Cardiovascular Research Center and the Center for Computational Biology & Bioinformatics. Dr. Khomtchouk’s research group is pioneering the field of cardioinformatics, working at the nexus of bioinformatics and precision cardiology, with the goal of integrating computational biology and AI/machine learning-based approaches to illuminate novel cardio-(vascular/renal/metabolic) biology and enable new therapeutics. The lab’s principal research focus is on engineering database technologies that provide powerful query and browsing interfaces between biomedical data and user, with the primary goal of enabling computationally-derived therapeutics in heart disease and its associated renal and metabolic co-morbidities such as chronic kidney disease and type 2 diabetes. Dr. Khomtchouk serves on the editorial board of “Circulation: Genomic and Precision Medicine”, the American Heart Association’s flagship computational journal.
Research Interests
- Cardioinformatics
- Drug Discovery
- Databases
- Epigenetics and Genomics
- Entrepreneurship
- Machine Learning
Research Program
The Khomtchouk Lab leads a team of drug discovery researchers who seek to develop innovative cardiovascular/renal/metabolic therapies and improve understanding of cardiovascular health-to-disease transitions through the data-driven application of translational bioinformatics approaches and single-cell genomics methods. Dr. Khomtchouk is a principal investigator of the HeartBioPortal project, the world’s largest human cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease genetics database, which enables gene and variant-level search across various heart disease and stroke phenotypes for the broader research community. Recently published database projects include PlaqView, the largest and most comprehensive single-cell cardiovascular genomics portal to-date, which is designed as a drug discovery dashboard to facilitate novel target discovery and repurposing initiatives based on large-scale harmonization and integration of publicly available scRNA-seq and scATAC-seq datasets in atherosclerosis, coronary artery disease, atrial fibrillation, and heart failure.
Given his translational research interests, Dr. Khomtchouk is a strong advocate of the need to not only bridge the “bench-to-bedside” divide, but also the “informatics-to-medicine” divide, and has previously been involved in the Stanford SPARK drug development and translational research program, the NHLBI BioData Catalyst ecosystem, the NHLBI Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Whole Genome Sequencing Program (Atherosclerosis Working Group), and served as a Research Associate in the VA Palo Alto Healthcare System working on cardiovascular genomics profiles in Korean and Vietnam War veterans with heart and vasculature problems enrolled in the Million Veteran Program.
Dr. Khomtchouk previously held a faculty position as Instructor of Medicine at the University of Chicago and served as an American Heart Association (AHA) Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Biology and Department of Medicine (Division of Cardiovascular Medicine) at Stanford University. During his tenure at the University of Chicago, he co-founded Dock Therapeutics, Inc. in April 2021 with fellow UChicago faculty member and biotech entrepreneur, Dr. Michael H. Davidson (founder of Omthera Pharmaceuticals, acquired by AstraZeneca for 443M in 2016; founder of Corvidia Therapeutics, acquired by Novo Nordisk for 2.1B in 2020), as part of the NSF i-Corps program hosted through the UChicago Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Booth School of Business.
Active Research Grants
R01 (NIH/NIDDK, 2022-27), Khomtchouk (Principal Investigator), Molecular Genetics of Hereditary Endoplasmic Reticulum Diabetes.
U54 (NIH/NHLBI, 2021-26), Khomtchouk (Co-Investigator), HeartShare DeCODE-HF: Data translation center to Combine Omics, Deep phenotyping, and Electronic health records for Heart Failure subtypes and treatment targets.
Classes
INFO B536 Computational Methods for Biomedical Informatics
INFO B556 Biological Database Management